thuviaptarth | (no subject)

I don't know what to do with myself now that I don't have a vid to go home to every night. Yuletide just isn't the same. Clearly, the thing to do is to start another vid. I have reviewed the source for random fandom #1 and decided I don't want to vid it after all, and started reviewing the source for random fandom #2 and decided I still like that vid idea. And I edited the audio. Editing hip hop is SO MUCH EASIER than editing alternative rock, guys! All my vid songs should be hip hop songs! Sadly, my imaginary vids playlist does not agree.

I am not as psyched about random fandom #2 vid as I was about "Low Red Moon," but I expect I will get pulled in when I am vidding, or anyhow that's how it works with writing. Mostly I am excited about Buffy plans (but I need to rewatch the series first) and Sarah Connor Chronicles plans (but I will wait for hiatus because trying to vid a show with canon that changes every week is too scary). It is so intimidating to think about vidding Buffy -- there's so much canon, and so many of the vids I imprinted on way back when were Buffy vids. I'm afraid everything I do will have other people's fingerprints all over it. I am afraid of that with Supernatural, too; in some ways, it was much, much easier to vid Ruby than it would have been to vid Sam or Dean. (And in other ways it was much, much harder. I could write an essay on how the visual narrative undercut half of what the dialog tried to establish about Ruby, if I thought anyone would care.) Even with a focus on Ruby, it was impossible to avoid using clips I've seen used dozens of times before.

I think there may be around three people in the world who care about random fandom #2 -- it's a Yuletide perenniel -- but fortunately I am pretty sure I can rope in at least one of them for beta.

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Semi-relevantly, I keep starting to write a complainy post about how 70% of the footage Zoe is in is footage that has "this shot is about Mal" written on it in large block letters (and my feeble attempts to work around this), but I never have the energy to finish it.

It is relevant! At VVC,

cesperanza was speaking about how now vidders had the technology to do whatever they wanted, rewrite the source in any way, and I was thinking about what you'd said about trying to vid Zoe and about some of the issues I had in vidding Ruby and disagreed strongly. If what you want is to slash the male leads of an action show, then yeah, maybe now we have the tech to put in the kisses and the sex. If what you want is to draw more attention to characters--and the *type* of characters--consistently sidelined by the narrative, I'm not so sure.

I've known since reading Laura Mulvey that POV in visual media is strongly gendered, but recently I've become more aware of how strongly it's raced. It's hard to find Zoe as the center of the clip, or Book. (I'm truly amazed by what you and

gwyn_r did with limited source.) I checked out a Crusoe vid recently and even though the vidder was trying to give equal weight to Friday, you could tell what the source gave more weight to: all the shots were constructed to frame Crusoe, not Friday. And there are some things you can do with this: mask people out of the picture, re-light (& re-shadow) the picture, re-cut the clip. I used variations of them all. But it's still all too much like trying to manufacture something from nothing.

Ruby is supposed to be physically powerful, but we see her fighting only three times in the entire season: (1) in her introduction, she saves Sam and takes out two demons on her own -- but another corners her, and Sam saves her; (2) she fights another female demon to save Sam and Dean (that was the Lost Femslash Verse, sadly cut), is defeated by her, and is saved by Dean; (3) she beats up Dean and Sam in an argument, which is really part of a maneuver by Dean to trap her in a devil's trap. So she's a strong fighter -- who we hardly ever see fighting, and who we always we see losing fights.

Ruby is supposed to have arcane knowledge critical to Sam and Dean's success, and tells Bobby how to rebuild a key magical weapon -- off-screen. We don't see her do it, and we don't even see her hand the weapon to Sam -- Bobby is the one who hands the weapon to Sam. Ruby just nods at him. The visual we get for Ruby in relation to this exchange? Bobby *shoots her* to prove the gun, at that point, is still broken and doesn't kill demons. The expression of Ruby's magical knowledge is *getting shot*.

Ruby had a past relationship with a female demon -- they were lovers, although what gender each was at the time is unknown. The visuals? The two of them not getting that close to each other, then fighting, still not that close to each other. It was *canon* femslash and it was *still* hard to make it look slashy. And needless to say, the depth of the relationship -- that this was the demon to whom Ruby sold her soul when human -- was in no way expressed visually.

A key revelation: all demons were human once; they sold their souls to other demons, then were tortured into forgetting their human lives and becoming demons after death. Visuals? Ruby standing in a parking lot talking to Dean.

Ruby is kicked out of her body and vanquished by Lilith *off-screen*. It's not even clear exactly when it happens, and we don't even get her death scene. (When I started the vid, in fact, I assumed she wouldn't be back for the next season, even re-cast as a different actress.) Even "her" body -- the body usually possessed by Ruby instead of Lilith -- doesn't get a full death scene, because it falls by Dean's body, which is of greater narrative and character concern.

The dialog keeps *saying* this is a powerful, dangerous demon, but the visuals keep saying otherwise.

And there are some things you can do with this: mask people out of the picture, re-light (& re-shadow) the picture, re-cut the clip.

And using motion or framing carried over from the previous clip to redirect the eye. And probably more tricks I didn't think of. But it's still difficult.

Yeah -- I zoomed and cropped more than half of the shots where Zoe wasn't the only person in the frame, and it didn't help nearly as much as I wanted it to. And even when Zoe is the only person in the frame, she tends to be much farther from the camera than, say, River -- far, far fewer closeups, less-close closeups when there were closeups, and that sounds less major than it is when I phrase it like that, but it is! And there were all these other things. I can work around limitations, or try to, but the limitations are still there, and still visible -- there's a big difference between adding a zoom, and being able to teleport yourself back to the filming of the scene and moving the camera 10 feet to one side for a different angle.

The Ruby stuff is fascinating. And frustrating. (And also gives me helpful background for Low Red Moon, since I only saw about three episodes of S3 SPN.) I would say things, but I don't really have anything to add. Thank you for writing it out!

With Zoe it wasn't contradictory; the camera is doing the same thing as the writing. (I read one of the Firefly official book things in the process of making the vid, and there were little blurbs from Joss about each character's creation, and Zoe's was all about what she was supposed to show about Mal.) I'd known when I started the vid that Zoe didn't really have a character arc, or really much onscreen development at all -- the first time I watched Firefly I was sulky because I liked Zoe and River best and the Zoe-centric episode never came -- but I hadn't realized how much that came through in every frame. Vidding the Haitian was easier.

... Not that I'm bitter.

Oh, and I forgot the bit where she reveals she'd been a witch (witches in SPN mythology are people--almost exclusively women--who make deals with demons). Again, no visual linkages.

Maybe I should make this its own post, after all.

And even when Zoe is the only person in the frame, she tends to be much farther from the camera than, say, River -- far, far fewer closeups, less-close closeups when there were closeups, and that sounds less major than it is when I phrase it like that, but it is!

Yes! There's one place that still makes me wince because I needed a close-up and it didn't exist. And I'm sure that happens with major characters, but seriously -- it was so much easier to find alternative close-ups for Sam.

I am so frustrated we never got a Zoe episode. I've heard people call "War Stories" her episode, and it boggles me. It's not a Zoe episode -- it's a Wash episode. It's a Wash episode in which he and Mal do male primate posturing and then bonding, even though Zoe refuses to act like an object of dispute. The comic "Better Days" should have been a Zoe comic, but it fails at character development, not to mention coherency.

Not enough Zoe, damn it.